ADDING USERNAME PERMISSIONS TO YOUR TABLEAU WORKBOOK

Let’s talk security!  Here is the scenario:  You need to create row based permissions that cannot be done at the database level for a number of reasons.  What do you do?  This blog post is going to explore an alternative to Tableau’s user filtering.

Requirements

• Each row of data can only be assigned to one user (or rows need to be duplicated to accommodate multiple users
• Username field in data need to match Username field on Tableau Server (in many cases this mean Active Directory Name)
• To keep the workbook secure the audience should not be able to download the workbook

Steps

Create the visualization that you would like your users to see

Add username (from data source) to filters and create a conditional filter: USERNAME() = Username.  This condition means that anytime the Tableau username is equal to the username in the data it will show.

     

Use the server “login as” menu to view the visualization as a different user (bottom right of screen).

Additional features of this visualization

Product Hierarchy - this product hierarchy is unique because all levels of the hierarchy can be rolled up to create a grand total.  To create the highest level of this hierarchy create a calculation: "+".  This will force the hierarchy to roll up into a one row.

Dynamic Bar Graph Title - This title is a concatenated calculation

Additional helpful links

Tableau user functions

Tableau’s user filtering